Cosmic Queries: The Science of Humans at War

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk. This is a Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk. Yes, it is. And in this Cosmic Queries, we're gonna be talking about the science of war. Ooh, science of humans at war. Yeah, and I have to tell you, man, people are obsessed with this subject. I don't understand how, I don't get it. I have never received the breadth of queries. Because you solicited questions on this topic already. Yes, we have solicited the questions from all over the internet. I was told this morning that this would be the topic, but you've been scheming all week on this. All week long, we've been receiving questions, and I have to tell you that. People are very passionate about it, and they're doing a lot of deep thinking, you know? Some of the questions, I'm like, you were clearly high when you wrote that question. You had to be high to write that question. Because I don't have any, I mean, while- You don't get to see the questions. Plus, that's true, but though I be a scientist, I have no particular expertise in this topic. Right. Okay, so I figured, okay, then they plunked a book down in front of me called Grunt, The Curious Science of Humans at War. So I said, damn, I gotta read this book, like, in the next hour? But then they told me, no, Mary Roach, the author of the book, is here with us! From Oakland, California, Mary Roach, yes. Thank you, Mary. This is not your first time on StarTalk. No, no. It's like your fourth time or something. I think we, yeah, the fourth, yeah. Yeah, you got like the coolest StarTalkian books we could ever find. So great to have you on here. So basically, these questions are gonna be for Mary. I'll be Mary's sidecar on this. I could back her up with some physics if we need it. This is her book. Yeah, for the most part, this is what people wanna know. And Mary, I'm not gonna lie to you and say, oh, I read this book, and I haven't read it yet. I just saw it like this minute. Every other talk show host is lying to you when they said they read your book. Oh, I know. You know this. I know. I haven't read it either. I don't remember what's in it. I wrote it a long time ago. We'll see what these people say. We'll see what the people say. And listen, like I said, some of the questions are out there. But just before you go in. Just an overview. What is this subject? Okay, so this is military science, but specifically not the weapons and the bombs and the strategy, which you may have a lot of questions there about that, and I will turn those all over to you. Okay, so this is the human. Right, the human condition. Yeah, it's an extreme heat and loud noise and fear and panic and flies and diarrhea and all of the things that people don't necessarily think about, but the military thinks about because it knocks soldiers out of commission, and anyway, so that kind of. It's all in here. So this was your next project after all these other completely far-flung places you have been in your book portfolio. Yeah, you'd think I would take a body of knowledge that I've worked on and build upon that so that I don't. I have to start all over again. Knowing nothing. All right, so let's try this. Yeah. No, no, no, wait, wait, still before. Okay. What is the most weirdest scientific thing you can share with us about military grunts? Okay, here's, okay, here's. Just, just, just. Just pull the soil here first. The book starts out with the chicken gun, and I love the chicken. The chicken gun. Because I like to say the word chicken whenever possible. Chicken gun. I think I know the chicken gun story. Do you? Yeah, yeah. I have never, I don't think I'm familiar with the chicken gun. Yeah, it's, you're testing the, the, the, the canopy airplanes of fighter pilots. Right. So, okay. The chicken is a stand-in for your turkey vulture, your Canada goose, your starling, whatever it is. It's kind of a worst case scenario. Cause the chicken, it's a, it's kind of an odd choice cause it doesn't, chicken doesn't actually fly. They're not gonna, no matter how long you're a pilot, you are never going to actually hit a chicken. But it's a bird and it's readily variable at your grocers. It's consistent. Right. So you take a frozen chicken, you thaw it out, you load the chicken gun and you fire it at the canopy. Right. At the same speed that the plane would otherwise encounter it flying through the air. Right. But it was, there were a lot of thought went into this because there's also, cause they're like, well, the chicken, that's will be, it's very dense. It's a big heavy thing. That'll be great. But in fact, there's something called, pause for drama, the feathered bullet phenomenon, which is bullet phenomenon. Tiny little bird, you know, starling, maybe, hits the windshield, just like a bullet, right into the pilot. So, yeah. So, you know, you think you haven't figured out, yeah, we'll use a chicken. And then there's, and then all of a sudden a tiny bird comes through and shoots you in the head. Well, wait, because the bird appears a tinier hole and it's a different kind of impact, basically, that was not previously considered. It's more focused, it's closer to a bullet. Okay, so to test this, they should just shoot bullets. Sit here and let's see if the bullet hits you. Or find a finch that's packing. You have a bird fire a gun. Right, exactly. Now, just four days ago, I was at Edwards Air Force Base and I saw the canopy of the F-22 fighter and it was large and beautiful. It was completely transparent. And what the pilots were telling me is that now, it's not just a canopy to their side and to their front, it is completely around them. And so they have full, high quality visual confirmation of anything that's around them. And I said, shouldn't you be flying with instruments rather than relying on your own damn eyes? Yeah, that's normally the pilot's way. Oh, okay. Rely on instruments as opposed to. That's what I know, if you're a fighter pilot, that's what I thought. But anyhow, let's get to, so that's an interesting example. Yeah, the chicken gun. The problem I found out is that when birds and planes take off into the wind, so the birds are like, oh, no, heading along, they're not looking behind, so they don't have a visual awareness to get out of the way. So that was a, that's a problem. They're not looking at what's coming at them. Right. The planes coming up from behind. For me, that's one of the most beautiful metaphors. Do tell. It's in life. Here we go. When the wind is against you. Right. Remember, that is exactly the condition. To take planes. Planes take flight. And that's a, that is a beautiful metaphor. Right. Mine is when the wind is. I'm sticking with the airplane here. Why do I ruin my metaphor? That's why I said chicken. I chose the more lovely Canada Goose. Yeah, so the, yeah, the plane wants the high speed. It can be relative to the air. It's not about the ground, it's about the air. So you take off into the moving air, then you can take off at a lower ground speed because your airspeed's higher, that's all. That's what's going on. And the birds figured that out too. Yeah. Yeah. Very intelligent. So let's do this. Chuck, you solicited questions on this topic. And we have them, and our first question is a Patreon Patrons question, which of course, if you actually support us on Patreon, then we will put your question to the top of the queue. Is that right? Yes, as a matter of fact. They're actually buying their way to the top of the thing? I can think of no better way to get people to participate. Or to get votes. Buy the votes. Okay, what's your first question? This is from Jeff Prime, who is a Patreon Patron, and Jeff wants to know this from Omaha, Nebraska. My unit and I were deployed in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. I personally have known several men from my unit that suffer from PTSD while other members do not. With all other variables being equal, is there a biological reason why some soldiers handle war differently in a mental capacity that helps explain why some soldiers suffer PTSD while others do not? Good one, Mary, what do you think? Very good question. Yes, and I do not know the answer. Cool. Yes. Okay, there you have it. There you have it. And moving on. I can reflect on this fact. There's probably a reason. Yeah, I would think that if we knew that definitively, then we would be able to delineate why that is and then look for a cure to PTSD. Or keep those people out of combat. Right, which is what one of the things in the book was, they were looking at heat injuries and there's a huge individual variation in who can acclimate to extreme heat, like who can feel like start sweating heavy and sooner and there's like, I can deal with this and other people can't and they get heat stroke and they sometimes die. I'm pretty good in a wide range. I'm pretty good in a wide range of temperatures. And what I found is, oh, could you put on the heat? Oh, can you put on the heat? And I'm just kind of chillin with the cool. No, I'm just- You're self-regulating. Yeah, kind of. It's not that I don't feel hot or feel cold. It's that I'm okay with it. Now you have a- See, that's probably psychological. You just roll with everything. Maybe it is psychological rather than physiological. In either case, you still want to know who's susceptible to PTSD and who isn't. And of course, there's that very famous scene. I only know it from the film. I assume it was true, with Patton, walks into an infirmary, and there's these wounded soldiers there, bandages, and there's one soldier who has no wounds at all. He's there in tears at the edge of the bed. He has what they called back then, shell shock. Yeah, there was shell shock. And then combat fatigue. And then it was combat fatigue. And now it's PTSD. It was more real when you have more syllables. So he slapped, he bitch slapped the soldier. And this made it to the press that he had no sort of compassion. No compassion. Yeah, empathy for this young man. Yeah, and he was saying. Didn't bother him, apparently, so he figured everybody else should. I guess it was a day when psychological injury was not viewed as the same as physical injury. Whereas today, so often, this is how we do. Okay. What else you got? That's a great question. It remains a great question without an answer available from this table. No, I don't have an answer. There's nothing wrong with that. Okay, now this one is really for Neil, Mary. And I'm reading it, Neil, because I'm not sure what this guy's talking about. Okay, okay, and this is from Nick Szafronski. You think that's right? Szafronski. Szafronski. Szafronski. Chuck, if you start pronouncing names correctly, then we won't know what to do with you. You can pronounce it however you want, and that's your thing now. That's my thing. It could be Szafronski, I don't know. Szafronski, right? Szafronski, Szafronski. Okay, here we go. This is what he says, I'm a young sci-fi writer and fantasy. I'm currently working on a hard science fiction book. My question is, how much do we understand, here's the thing, Neil, exotic particles, what if any effect they do have on the human body? And then he says, if you could put a blurb about my book, I really appreciate it. Yeah, so I don't think I'm gonna do the blurb about the book, but. Well, I think I have a way to link this back to Mary, but we have the portfolio of particles that exist, that have been measured. They have names, they have masses, they have energies in different states and this sort of thing and half-lives. And so, some particles just go straight through you, like neutrinos. Billions go through you every square centimeter, every second from the sun and they do nothing to us. They don't interact. What matters is if they interact with you. That's the difference. And if they interact, they could do damage. And so, this is a, so if you wanna weaponize a particle, you would make some kind of device that you know contains particles that will interact with your body in some way, mess with your DNA, mess with your skin, mess with whatever, and then that becomes a weaponized ray gun, basically. So you make the particles a delivery system for some type of debilitation. Correct, correct. Now, we do this for electromagnetic energy. So there's a movable microwave device, which is, it's a non-lethal anti-personnel weapon. It's non-lethal. So if there's a crowd of people, you drive up this truck, you aim this antenna at the people, and it's like you just put them all in a microwave oven. Now, do you first get them to hold a burrito? So they can eat it on the way. And you gotta take the wrapper off. So what happens is their skin starts feeling hot and they wanna go out of the beam. So they scatter. They scatter, they scatter. So you can decentralize what might be a mob that's coming. Is there any discussion in the military about weapons, the effect of weapons on people that are not just guns, your traditional? Well, there was, not in this book, but one of my previous books, there was Infrasound. I don't know which book this was even, but there was this- She's got so many books, she don't remember which book that was in that she wrote. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's badass, actually. And some book that I wrote somewhere, I believe I said- So what you all do is buy them all. Buy them all, lay them out, shoot the point to it. And you let me know. That's it, you buy them all. Exactly, so yeah, but Infrasound, there was this talk about that the military was looking for a non-lethal weapon, I think it was. Supposedly it would, no, it was Infrasound, and it was like long, slow, weightless, low frequency, and then it would have the same resonant frequency as some of the internal organs, so it would create fear, nausea, terror, but yeah, never. This is like in Jurassic Park, when T-Rex, like the liquid in the. Right, and you see the vibration and the liquid in the glass. Right, right, right. That type of deal. Yeah, like it would launch a ball of Infrasound. But anyway, I could never find it. There'd be T-Rex would be one of the settings. By the way, the military doesn't have to look for that. We already have it. It's called One Direction. Yeah. They're a boy band. Okay. Well, there was some concern about, NASA had concerns about, because the engines were putting in a launch, they would be putting out tremendous amounts of Infrasound and they were afraid they were going to deliver jelly to the moon. That it would even, it was that intent. But I think as it turned out, it wasn't. But in fact, they do have what they call a sound abatement system. And before every launch, in the seconds before they ignite the engine, you see this, basically a swimming pool's worth of water dumped onto the launch pad. And the water absorbs the acoustic reverberations. That's right. They're worried that the acoustic reverberations would just completely tear apart the entire bottom half of the rocket. Right, like the singer with the glass breaking shattered. Exactly, yes. So what they do is they put in the water. That absorbs the energy and that way the energy doesn't hit the rocket again. So next time, watch very closely every single launch. And there are big tanks surrounding launch pads. They're water tanks. Bada-bing! And then the vibrations hit, it vaporizes the water. So some of the smoke you see coming out is steam basically. Vaporized by the acoustic energy of vibration. That's amazing. Give me one more question. By the way, that is the exact sound that it makes when the water is dumped. Bada-bing! Bada-bing! It's awesome, it's awesome. Three words. Get to us, Chuck. Okay, here's a quick one, since we don't have a lot of time. Tech Advancement Through Wars from Matty Stark on Facebook says this. How do you feel about the idea that war is necessary for technological advancement? Ooh, let me cast that in a grunt question, okay? So, how much has war advanced medicine? A lot, in terms of combat trauma. I mean, stuff like, all right, you get somebody whose artery is cut and they've got about two minutes. So, you know, in terms of getting- Two minutes before they're dead. Before they bleed out and they're dead. Two minutes to stabilize, stop the bleeding, stabilize them and get them somewhere. They've gotten really good at that. So, emergency care, that's been huge. It's a war-based thing. Also things you wouldn't necessarily think about. There was a Navy guy, Captain Phillips, not that other Captain Phillips, who came up with this discovery that if you, if someone's got extreme diarrhea, like cholera, where you're losing five gallons of liquid. He even invented this thing, the cholera cot. It's a cot with a hole and a bucket. You're just, and you're gonna die quickly because you're just leaking. You're leaking. So, what does he invent? The bucket? That's not an invention. Well, the cholera cot was one invention, but not the important one. The important one was if you add glucose to the rehydration fluids, it enhances absorption of the fluids and the salt. So, now, you can drink them rather than hook up an IV. So, in a third world country where somebody, they don't have to make their way to a clinic and get hooked up to an IV. They can actually drink this stuff and it's saved millions of lives. Because it's still like two, some million people die. So, here's a morbid question. You ready? Ready. I'm always ready. Have more people, have more lives been saved by the medical advances from war than lives that have been lost from the waging of war itself? Interesting. Well, they, you know. Okay, well, here's a figure for you. This war is good for you people. I know. We have to kill you in order to save you. You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment. Welcome back to StarTalk. I left you with a question just before the end. I just wanted to know, given how many lives have been saved by medical advances from innovations during war, Right. could one make the case, the morbid case that the number of people who have died at war is less than the number of lives who've been saved by the medical advances derived from it? Probably just from the dysentery and diarrhea statistics alone. I mean, you're telling, okay, so 2.5 million people a year still there. WHO, that's the figure for deaths. The World Health Organization. Still, to this day. Yes. Two and a half million people die from dehydration, from diarrhea, cholera or some other. Yeah, in developing nations. So that's a huge... Two and a half million a year. Two and a half million, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so 50 million people died in the Second World War. That was the last number I checked. So 25 years of that, that's just the diarrhea alone. Right. Plus you've... But they are dying. We didn't stop them from dying. So I want to know if lives have been saved. Well, no, but she's saying that just the advancements that we've made to combat that may have saved a significant number of lives. Whether or not it balances, we don't know. Right, but my statistic that they're still dying. They're still dying. So what you're saying, that number could have been much larger. Much larger, yeah. If that's the number they're still dying, it would have been a huger. Huge. Huge. It would have been huge. Just like my hair. Huge. Huge. Oh, man. Not like my hands. But you know what, I recently saw a statistic on the number of deaths from car crashes versus the... Every year that there's been a military conflict, the number of deaths just from car crashes dwarfs the number from killed in whatever the war that's going on. Okay, not the Second World War, but surely since then. No, since then. Yeah, we lose 100 people a day. Exactly. No, are they only accounting American deaths or are they counting the number of people? Because we tend to kill a lot more people than... Exactly. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I can tell you, it's 100 people a day on the roads. And at the peak of the Vietnam War, we were losing 100 servicemen a week. So it's basically a factor of seven higher in cars than in military, not the Second World War. But here's something I tweeted recently. The Second World War, you run the math, we were losing 1,000 humans per hour. Wow. 1,000 per hour died at the hands of another human being during the six years of the Second World War. That's insane. However, the Mexican-American War, seven to one ratio disease to combat injury, dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, seven to one, of course, it's Mexico and diarrhea, they're always going to be linked. I know. Poor Mexico, even back then. Even back then, don't drink the water, back then. Yeah. So yeah, there was that quote, William Osler, dysentery has been more fatal to soldiers than powder or shot. Ooh, wow. That's even as good as your chicken metaphor that you let loose earlier. It's not. I read. All right, Chuck, what else you got? Here we go. Let's move on. This seems to be a big theme that people want to know about. And this is from Haren Filth. Okay, that's the name. That's how you're pronouncing the name, but go on. No, no, no. F-I-L-T-A. Let me have fun with how you can pronounce stuff. All right, go on. Maybe you just wrote it that way to mess with me. Here we go. Hi, Neil. Really love the show. Keep it up. My question is, in recent films such as Civil War, we're talking about Marvel Comics Civil War. We see genetically advanced soldiers like Bucky, who is a character of Captain America's friend. I'm sorry, I'm translating as he asks a question. And the Winter Soldiers, also part of the genetically modified soldiers, could super soldiers eventually become a reality? If so, what are the biological implications of doing such a thing? Greetings from Mexico City. Yes. This is a show for you. Wait, so, Mary. I'm going to go to Mexico City. It's supposed to be great. So, Mary, are there studies of, have there been attempts to modify the human physiology in war? I saw this amazing paper, DARPA, you know, DARPA, DARPA is the way outside the box. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. Yes, yes. It was a paper. It was speculation. It was not projects that are underway, but they were listing like... One of the whole points of DARPA is to have highly speculative research that could break open a whole new field of military might. This was in particular modifications to the human body. What could we do? And inspiration from the animal kingdom. So they were looking at unihemispheric sleep, which you have in marine mammals and in some geese and ducks. Stick with one eye open. Yeah, exactly. So they funded some research, some basic research into marine biologists and bird people, ornithologists would be, I guess, the word. I call them bird people. Bug people? I call them bug people. The bug people have probably been doing some work too. But just looking into how does this work and could we foster this and somehow make our soldiers able to sleep? Because sleep deprivation is huge and it affects your performance, your military performance. So if there were a way to sleep with one half of the brain and keep the other eye open and make sure nobody's sneaking up on you. Then you swap brain halves. Presumably both halves need to be. Like sharks. Right. So it was an amazing list. There were things like the human llamas or could you somehow have more hemoglobin for mountain warfare? Could you make somebody able to kind of sherpaize them quickly to be able to function better at high altitudes? I do remember surgically installed gills was on the list. Wow. It'd be like Waterworld right there. Waterworld. Does Kevin Costner know about this? That's right. We're going to work on it. We're going to try him out first. When he came around his neck and you saw the gills in the movie. So here's my take on that. Not that anybody asked, but I'll tell you my take. In the early days of space exploration, there was all this talk about modifying the human physiology to accommodate the stress and strain on our body in space. And in almost every case, they came up with an engineering solution to the problem rather than a biological one, where it therefore was not invasive to the human body. They would talk about, is there some pill you can take where the brain would not require as much oxygen when you do a high g-turn out from a, you know, from a, as a fighter pilot might when they're, when they're turning around and the, and that way your brain wouldn't need as much oxygen and still, and then the engineers just developed this, these suits. Right. Where they just squeeze your leg. Yeah, because you're like, blood ain't got no way to go. Right. So, so many of these are injured. How about one where you don't feel nauseous and feel nausea in zero g or you can just spin up the space station and create one g. So, so my, my, oh, you, do you want to make bulletproof skin or just make Kevlar bullet and wear a bulletproof vest? Right. So. I want the bulletproof skin. Just saying. I'm just going to go on record and say the bulletproof skin is what I would go with. Go for it. So I'm more Tony Stark on this. Give me the, give me the suit. Give me the power, the money and the brains and we'll make, we'll make anything we need. I will be able to fly. That's cool. That's cool. All right. What else you got? All right. Here we go. Johnny Glasgow from Facebook says, hi Neil. That would be Facebook, our followers on Facebook. Our followers on Facebook. Facebook headquarters. Right. Exactly. Right. He's not actually having coffee with Zuckerberg right now. He says, hi Neil, hi Mary. What scientific advances made during wartime have the biggest positive effect on our civilian lives today? I'm going to have to go with the medical stuff. The medical stuff. Yeah. The stuff we were talking about earlier. The stuff we were talking about earlier. That is the most positive effect. Positive effect, yeah. I mean, I guess you could talk about taking forward the whole notion of drones completely taking humans out of the equation, but that's got other issues. The whole episode on Star Trek. Was indeed where they fought the war through mathematical calculations. And then people reported to a chamber for annihilation. Because the calculations showed that you would have been killed in that. You would have been killed in the battle. They just walked in and they took them out. Exactly. And that, which is that... Captain Kirk said, no, you can't do that way. That is not war. War is ugly and bloody. Spock said, actually though, statistically, I can see the merit to this particular approach. Well, that's cool. Yeah. So definitely the medical advancements is... That's what comes to mind in terms of a positive, yeah, positive. Okay, I would say... Are there any technological advancements? I would say one thing. Go ahead. The V-2 rocket was the very first intercontinental ballistic missile, which became the foundation of our entire space arsenal. So everything that we know and love about space, including where you get your weather maps from the weather channel, you get people saying, I don't mind going to... What do I need space for? I have my GPS in the weather channel. That's all I need. That's like, get your government hands off my Medicare. That's what that statement is. That's exactly what that is. So I would say... Yeah, NASA, anything that's miniaturized, fireproof, portable, lightweight. Oh yeah, the entire miniaturized... That's NASA. I know. There's probably a... War didn't have to miniaturize the way NASA did, because you have to launch it, you know. Well then again, here's... Every ounce cost you money. Here's a war thing, though. The first... It's $10,000 a pound to orbit. So if you got a little extra gut, I ain't flying that in space. You go get back on a treadmill. So how about this? I believe the first computers were used to calculate the trajectory of mortar shells. Is that correct? That is true. Yes. Yep. And now we have computers... I mean, we know what they do now. Yeah, yeah. So in fact, the military led the development of supercomputing. Yes. That's right. Nowadays, it's commercially driven because the demand is there, but in the day, yeah. Back in the day. Right. Right. There you go. All right. All right. Well, not bad. Not bad at all. What else you got? Here we go. This is from Christian Prisblick. Prisblick. Okay. Here you go, Mary. Now they're just messing with you, Chuck. They're just messing with you. I know. Christian, right? Where are the Joe Smiths out there? Prisblick? Prisblick. Next time, can a Joe Smith please ask Chuck a question? I know. Where's Joe Smith when I need him? Okay. Okay, Christian Prisblick from Twitter says this, do vets of armed combat face a disproportionate number of chronic health issues and does race play a role or as well as class? So class and race, do they play a role in the chronic health issues that vets face? And do vets face more chronic health issues than anyone else by virtue of being a vet? I would, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a tremendous amount. I mean, just like just starting with hearing, the number one VA expense, hearing loss, come away with, yeah, I mean, it's not just, it's not just rifle bombs going off and rifle fire. It's steady state noise. Like you're in a Blackhawk helicopter, which is like 106 decibels and you're in, so they have hearing protection. Chuck's imitating a helicopter. You like that? I like that. Yeah, can you do an M16? Well, M16 is a little bit more staccato, so it's... The M16, the rifle. But then there's the Huey from Vietnam. It was a pulsing sound, so you're saying being persistently bathed in high decibel sound, even beyond just whether you were near an explosion. Right, and the other problem is that when things go kinetic, when there's no warning, you don't have time to go roll down my foam earplug, pull my outer ear back, there's just not time, and they're not going to wear that stuff all the time because you lose your situational awareness, you can't hear somebody shouting, get down, help somebody over there. They've tried to do that in some movies. Well, they have, yeah, Special Operations is really cool, Bionic Hearing, it's so cool. It's a headset, and it attenuates the loud noises. Right, so the loud stuff gets quieter, and the quiet stuff is amplified. So you're like the bionic, it's like, so you can hear across the room. You can hear a conversation. Yeah, that was the eye, what you're doing. Oh, was that the eye? That was the eye. That was the ear? That was the ear. Okay, I think you're right, yeah. Cammie Summers had the ear, she had the ear. And now she's selling mattresses, late night TV. Can you hear me now? Okay, so that's interesting. So these, so. Anyway, yeah, but that's just, that's the biggest one. But then, yeah, you got a traumatic brain injury and you got, and orthopedic stuff. I mean, if you're in a vehicle that is designed to withstand an IED going off, I mean, you'll survive, you survive, but you, like, the bottom of it would come up and slam into the foot and the pelvis and the spine. Speaking of that. Just wear and tear on your body even if you're not blown up. So speaking of that, and this question is from. So these are veterans that have been in combat, not just veterans, generic veteran. Because most veterans have not been in combat. Right. Oh, so do they have more? Well, I don't know. Well, yeah, I mean, you know. We presume it's combat veterans. We would have to assume, because, I mean, I'm gonna say carpal tunnel doesn't count. I've been sitting at this desk filling out these reports for weeks. My wrists are killing me. Actually, I have this book called Dear America, which is a collection of letters home from Vietnam that was collected before they made a Vietnam memorial here in lower Manhattan. And so on the memorial are subsets of these letters. The book is all of them. That's cool. And just to your point, Mary, these are letters from all manner of servicemen serving in Vietnam. And there's some talking about like their friends getting blown up in front of them and wading through the muck and mire and the mosquitoes. And then there's another letter of someone who's in an office in Vietnam saying, I can't, I don't wanna laugh, but it's so hot in here, it's almost 94 degrees and the fan doesn't work. These working conditions are unbearable. It's like, do you have any idea what's going on? Around you? Around you? Around you, my typewriter keys are sticky, the humidity. So I think your biggest problem is your biggest problem. That's really what that is. Whatever your biggest problem is, that's your biggest problem. Wow, that's cool. Chuck, how many questions can you squeeze into this? All right, you know what, here's the deal. We're gonna go philosophical. Les Ollinhousa says, do you think there can be or ever has been something that can unite humans so effectively as war? What a profound question. Mars mission. Ooh, look at you with the Mars mission. Landing a human Mars, I don't think everybody's gonna be tuned in to that, right? Don't you think? Well, so let me agree to that. So I've thought a lot about things that unite humanity. So one of them is war, which is the largest organized unification of humans that we experience. Nothing mobilizes us like a good war. Exactly, and what odd thing is that it mobilizes us against one another, but it's nonetheless mobilizing. Another one is the Olympics. True. And another is the World Cup. Which, by the way, is a metaphor for war. Yes, it is, actually. And so too is the World Cup. Except you don't end up dead at the end of it. So the World Cup, the Olympics, and the International Space Station. When you look at the cost of the International Space Station and the number of countries involved, it is the greatest collaboration of nations outside of the waging of war. You look at just the total investment that has gone in it. Basically three billion a year plus. So yeah, yes, so I agree landing on Mars could do that if it's done as a multinational consortium. As a global, yeah, exactly. Which it would be, wouldn't it? I mean, don't you think? It can be, but I don't have enough confidence in the human species to think that we wouldn't do it out of competitive urges rather than cooperative urges. So you're saying that if we make it a reality show competition between countries, we're more apt to go to Mars than if we were just to wait for us to finally come together. My feeling is that your urge to be innovative is greater stimulated when you're in competition than when you're in cooperation. That's my feeling here. As capitalism at its best reveals, I want your money. I don't want you to give your money to the other person. So now that competition drives me to be better. There it is. There it is. There it is. I think we're out of time. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Well, let me just, so, Mary. Let me break ranks here and pull away from Chuck's questions. Is there one other thing you want us to know about your book before we end StarTalk today? Oh, gee, it's a dark topic, but it's an interesting, quirky, fun read. I don't want people to get it. I mean, war is serious, but people in the military have a good sense of humor. You have to, I think. You have to. Anytime there's death involved and life and death and all that. So it's fun. You interviewed servicemen? I was on a nuclear sub. I was in Camp Lemony. They let you in? It took me a year and a half to get on that. Yeah, I know, I know, yeah. That's pretty cool, actually. It was cool. So I was all over the place and it's an interesting, it's a foreign culture. And like any foreign culture, it's just a really interesting place to go and to learn about. Cool. Mary, thanks again for being on StarTalk. Thanks. Thank you. And so we'll just, I want to be on your tour list every single time. Oh, you bet. Okay. I want to be like, the only show that had every one of that damn books. Right here. We get them all. We're six for six, so. Well, we got to close out this part of the show. When StarTalk returns, Chuck Nice and Bill Nye take over the studio for a segment of maker-themed cosmic queries. Yes. Rock to you by Google. Welcome back, here's more of StarTalk. This is from at Mrs. Doodle Journey on Instagram. At Mrs. Doodle Journey. At Mrs. Doodle Journey. What is the best way to make a portable greenhouse? So I suppose she's looking at this. If I were, no, no, no, no, this weekend. Really? Yes, with clear plastic inflatable dome. That's what I do. That's it. That's all you really need. What I do, people play tennis under inflatable domes. People make inflatable domes for their backyard for fun. Held up by a fan. So you could, I could easily imagine a clear plastic dome. You carry it in essentially a backpack or a shopping cart or a hand truck, and you show up at wherever you want inflatable dome zone and turn the bad boy on. And the fan to hold the thing inflated will run off a solar panel connected to a battery that would keep the thing inflated all night. I did that without even just from the hip. I'm going to tell you, that was impressive. And then in space, it seems like it would be just the same thing with a lower pressure inflatable dome. And plants do seem to grow okay in space, you know, that's a little game they play up there. Right. So as long as you have the right soil, or the right hydroponic medium, right? Can I say medium? I like that. You're on the radio medium. I like hydroponic even better. Yes. And then then you can grow stuff, I guess, portably. Awesome. But still, so far, you still need light, a source of light and water and hydroponic nutrients. That's why they have lamps and closets. I'm sorry. I can't hear you. I don't know what you're talking about. You know, changing the subject to what used to be illegal agriculture at home. Looks like that's all going to be legal soon enough. Well, it should be. Let's be honest. I just can I ask as a fellow citizen? Yes. I don't want to breathe the secondhand smoke from the legalized and properly taxed marijuana sales. You do not want to breathe the secondhand smoke? I do not want to breathe the secondhand smoke. That's why they'll have coffee houses where you can go and designate areas for people who enjoy that. Grown in an inflatable greenhouse, maybe in an inclement place. Say, you're in Norway or something in the wintertime and you just got to have your inflatable greenhouse for whatever. You could do that. Your coffee house? Just enjoyment. Enjoyment, right. Just don't make me breathe this. I just never like the smell. If I may whine, I just never like the smell. And you worked in nightclubs for a hundred years. Yes. Everything smelled like smoke. Well, that was one of the great things about moving here to New York City was shortly after I moved here. When was this? 1999, exactly. But shortly thereafter, the mayor said, no more smoking in anywhere. We're going to get rid of smoking. Interior spaces. No interior spaces. And everyone lost their mind. Thought the place was going to go out of business. It was going to go out of business. And especially the restaurants and more importantly, the comedy clubs, because they're like, what are you talking about? That's all we do here. That's all we do here is smoke and drink. That's all that happens here. It's an occasional laugh is told. Right. And we don't even care about that as long as people are smoking and drinking. And sure enough, what happened is more people came. And they spent more money. Yeah. All right. So let's move on to Jennifer. You know, Jennifer. It's a long last name. Oh my, Jennifer. Melcade. Melcade. Anyway, Jennifer. Exactly. Coming to us from Instagram. Now, this is somewhat of an existential question. Like, dude. And so you're going to have to kind of really just branch yourself for a bit. Hey, Bill, what's next after 3D printing? Jennifer, I don't know. I don't know. But I think additive manufacture of all sorts is in the future for sure. You can design shapes you can make additively or 3D printing that you can't make through conventional machining. So what's after that? I guess molecular scale 3D printing or atomic scale. Look at you. You had it in you. Yes, atomic scale 3D printing. It's individual atoms placed on, let's say, substrates of exotic new future circuits. Wow. Extremely compact. Hustling against Moore's Law. You know, where every 10 years we double the amount of memory in a given volume. Yes. That's the future, Jennifer. I've answered it succinctly. And you can take that to the bank, Jennifer. No. It does seem reasonable. All right. So now, okay. So this is these names. All right. So go ahead. All right. So this person, I'm going to call you Yoy. Yoy. That's pretty cool. All right. Hey, Bill. I think you mean Yo. Or Yo. You can stop right there. Yeah. Yo, Bill. And it says, Hey, Bill, what are the limits of 3D printing? Don't cop out and say the human mind, Mr. Science Guy. Do we know yet what we cannot do or could never do with 3D printing? Well, I think of something big. What's a big thing? Empire State Building. I don't see why you couldn't 3D print it. No, and imagine the printer. No, no, no, the printer could go around. Well, not just that. The printer could go around the foundation in a big spiral and going up to the sky indefinitely as long as somebody fed it spiral 3D printing fluid. You know what? Now that you say that, there are these window cleaning autobots that they use. I forget the building in Oxford. The clean windows. Yes. Robotically. Robotically. And that's how they work. They just go around the building all day long in a spiral. Why not? What's not to love? In other words, think of it where the printer doesn't have to be bigger than the object being printed. Let's go with that insight. Right. Follow me? Right. I got you. Like a spider web is bigger than a spider. Exactly. In fact, the Empire State Building is bigger than a human. Exactly. It was built by some fraction. Oh my God. And humans would show up there and build the freaking thing. See? So, hey, yo, here's the problem. You think too small. No, I'm joking. No, no. He or she is a listener and viewer. We love you. No, we do love you. You're not. That's a really good point, though. It's a spider web is much bigger than a spider. Yes. And it's because you're building out. And so this would be building around. Spider provides the protein, the raw material, and then also the design and construction. It's very cool. Think big. Think big. It doesn't have to be a spiral. That was Uncle Bill just kind of jamming. All right. Here we go. Swanson Dinner. Swanson Dinner wants to know this. Our good friend, Swanson Dinner. Swanny says 3D printing seems like a great way to pave the road for human colonizations of places. Pave the road. Get it? Solar system. That's it. That's what we want to do is have 3D printers on board spacecraft that would make everything an astronaut needs when he or she needs it, rather than packing all this stuff. And I'm sure, I think you'll want a substantial number of rolls of duct tape, but also you'd have a machine that would print all the tools you might need. Should anything go wrong, you make the tool to fix that thing. Otherwise you don't take the tool. Instead you take computer files full of the files to make the tools. Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.